I have slept on a lot of islands. I have even lived on two. I love them. I love being surrounded by water. I love that the sun rises out of the ocean on one side and sets into the ocean on the other. I love the sound of the waves as I sleep and sitting with a coffee all morning, looking at the tide going out or coming in. I love searching amongst the rocks for beautiful ones and searching amongst the flotsam for treasures. I love having to get on a boat to get there and needing a boat to go home. I love the smallness of island life, the community of it, the reliance of people upon each other for the things they need. I love not needing to lock the doors, or the car, or the bike.
Every single time I've been to an island, I have wanted to live there. It still happens, each and every time. I spend the next weeks or months plotting how I'll overthrow my life and move to the island I have recently visited, trying to figure out how to make it work. Twice, I did it. Once on Block Island in RI in college and once on Koh Tao in Thailand as an adult.
I have gotten to a lot of islands on my own; created my own paradise. But for the past two summers, I owe my mother for allowing me to once again sleep on an island. Long Island, Maine, off Portland, in Casco Bay, where my mother's grandmother once owned a house. She loves that island like she loves me and my siblings. She cares for it. She treasures it. She calls it hers - like she owns it. She is a pretty smiley person anyway - amused by most things, but on the island, it is like she is lit up from inside. She is untiring in her desire to show others the island, to tell her stories from her times there. She is blessed to have two cousins and their families who feel the same way and this summer, they all went at the same time. In three different houses, with three different family groups, but coming together for a morning walk, a morning chat, an afternoon at the beach, an evening s'mores fire. My dad loves it too. He loves sitting and reading in a rocking chair on the porch or having an evening cocktail in the last of the sun before it slips behind the trees.
I have never been the same since I first started going to islands, and it was when I was very small, thanks to my mother. And now that I'm grown, she continues to help me spend time on one. Thanks, Mom.
Mom, waving goodbye from the pier as I departed on the ferry.
I have always loved the poem "If Once You Have Slept on an Island," by Rachel Lyman Field. It says, in a lovely, provincial manner, exactly how I feel. It is entirely true. If you've never slept on an island, I suggest you try it sometime. You, too, will never be the same.
If once you have slept on an island
You'll never be quite the same;
You may look as you looked the day before
And go by the same old name,
You may bustle about in street and shop
You may sit at home and sew,
But you'll see blue water and wheeling gulls
Wherever your feet may go.
You may chat with the neighbors of this and that
And close to your fire keep,
But you'll hear ship whistle and lighthouse bell
And tides beat through your sleep.
Oh! you won't know why and you can't say how
Such a change upon you came,
But once you have slept on an island,
You'll never be quite the same.
The ocean from my bed on Long Island last weekend.
